


Scenes Behind Bars

by orangesandlemons



Category: The Good Wife (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prison, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-16
Updated: 2016-02-22
Packaged: 2018-05-01 22:23:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5223212
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orangesandlemons/pseuds/orangesandlemons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU: Accused of tampering with voting machines, Alicia chose to push back against the establishment trying to frame her, and it backfired.  Now she has thirty-six months in prison to face, and an enigmatic new bunkmate to try to figure out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was spawned by this prompt from otpprompts on Tumblr: "AU where your OTP met up in prison. Does what happen in prison stay in prison or does it become something more?" As a consequence, no, Alicia and Kalinda have never met before in this fic. This fic is AU (though hopefully IC) for Kalinda from the get-go -- her background will be spelled out as the fic progresses -- but Alicia's life has followed the same trajectory as on the show, minus Kalinda's presence, until the SA race voter fraud plotline heats up in season 6. I think the show might be doing something new with that now, something involving Peter, so I should note -- in this fic, Peter was not involved in the voting machine tampering, nor did anyone go after him for it. Landau & Co. framed Alicia alone for it. 
> 
> My knowledge of prison is not particularly extensive -- in researching this I read three books and watched three seasons of Orange Is the New Black. As a result, Sherman Prison in this fic is very similar to Litchfield/Danbury from OITNB, with some changes made here and there. I apologize for any errors. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy the fic!

The CO processing Alicia into Sherman looks familiar to Alicia, a slender brunette with elfin features and an arrogance to her stance. Maybe Alicia has come across her in her few prior visits to Sherman, working out legal strategy with inmates filing appeals. Or maybe it's just comforting to think a stranger looks familiar when you're standing there naked in front of her.

 

“Squat and cough,” the CO says – Anderson, she said her name was, Officer Anderson. Alicia stares at her blankly. “Excuse me?”

 

Officer Anderson gives a humorless smile. “Squat. And. Cough,” she says, over-articulating each syllable. “It would be more efficient for me to do a cavity search manually, but thanks to the tireless efforts of lawyers – lawyers just like you used to be – that's been deemed sexual assault if there is no pressing reason to believe you are in fact carrying contraband. Are you going to give me a reason?”

 

Alicia swallows around the lump that rose in her throat at _like you used to be_. “No.”

 

“Then. One last time. Squat and cough.”

 

Alicia does. Her face is scorchingly red; her thoughts have turned to a million insects, trying to skitter out of her skull.

 

“Good,” Anderson says briskly, seeing no drugs or weapons cascading to the floor from Alicia's nether regions. “Stand up, take these –“ she shoves a bag at Alicia – “and put them on.” Alicia glances into the bag, sees a white sports bra, a giant pair of white granny panties, white socks, and something folded in a hideous shade of salmon. Anderson stacks a pair of blue canvas slip-on shoes on top of the bag, then gestures towards the plastic curtain in the corner behind which Alicia undressed. “Make it fast. We've only got about 20 minutes until the only guy who actually knows how to run the ID machine ends his shift.”

 

Fingerprinting, ID photo, medical exam: it all goes by in a blur for Alicia, whose mind seems to have retreated somewhere safe, somewhere none of this can touch her. She knows she'll probably need to know some of the stuff they're telling her, knows this is not really the right time to tune out, but there's a thread coming unraveled at the end of her ugly salmon sleeve and she can't stop picking at it. What is she supposed to do about the thread? No one is going to let her sew it back up here. What happens if her clothing unravels? (a bright pop of light as the flash on the ID camera goes off) Will they give her anything else to wear? If it's unraveled a quarter of an inch now, how far will it unravel in three years? (a photo ID shoved under her eyes, some woman who looks like her looking vague and stunned, eyes wide and blank, face bleached paper-white by the flash and INMATE printed in red beneath it) What do prisoners do with unraveling clothes? Is there some way to make illicit needles to stitch up tattered clothing? What would happen to her if a guard found her with an illicit needle? (her fingers shoved in unpleasant black muck, then pressed against a piece of paper, the mess of ink staining the side of her index finger all the way to the nail) She moves here and there as she's directed, sits in one chair for an abbreviated medical exam, another for a sit-down with a counselor. She gives him brief answers, some distant part of her brain apparently still functioning and alert, while her fingers worry at the thread. It must have come out of a tiny hole in the fabric. If she can thread it back through that hole and then tie it off, maybe –

 

“All set? Thanks, Dr. Ames. Inmate, take these and come with me,” Officer Anderson says, and Alicia, startled out of her stupor, nearly drops the mesh laundry bag the CO presses on her. There's a rush of cold air as Officer Anderson pushes open the door, and Alicia's heart starts to beat fast: if they're leaving the administration building, that can only mean they're headed for the actual prison now, are entering the moment she's been having nightmares about for months. Barbed wire arches above her head as Anderson takes her through the gate, and then it closes behind her and she is officially in prison.

 

“Home sweet home,” Officer Anderson says with a shark-toothed smile as she opens the door to the squat cement building branded SHERMAN CORRECTIONAL FACILITY FOR WOMEN. “Some other time we'll have someone give you the tour, but count is about to start, so I think we'll just get you into your bunk. They should be expecting you there.”

 

They? “I have roommates?” Alicia says, her voice slightly hoarse; she feels as if she hasn't spoken in decades.

 

Officer Anderson throws a sharp glance back at her over her shoulder; Alicia's not sure why. “You have a bunkmate. I meant the guards will expect you in your room. At count, you need to be where we expect you to be, or there will be a problem. Here. C Dorm.” They push through another door and suddenly there are women everywhere, mostly lounging on or around bunk beds, the bunks separated from one another by partitions – not the barred-in cells Alicia was expecting, but a warren of open cubicles, the bunk beds absurdly reminiscent of summer camp. Alicia's shoulders go rigid as she prepares for an onslaught of sidelong stares and murmured jeers, the sort of thing she's come to expect whenever she walks into a crowded place these days, but no one seems to be paying her much attention. A few eyes snag on her as she follows Officer Anderson through the dorm, but no one says anything to her and soon they're at a bunk in the far corner of the dorm, its top bed neatly made, its bottom bed bare. There's a woman sitting in the bottom bunk, though, her feet dangling a few inches off the ground, her face momentarily shadowed in the corner of the bunk. “And here you are,” Officer Anderson says. “Corner office. Now, stay here. Your --” she cuts a glance at the figure in the bunk – “bunkmate will tell you everything you need to know.” She nods once, an odd glint in her eye, and then leaves.

 

“Don't worry, it's yours,” comes a voice, and then the metal bunk frame rattles slightly as the woman slides out of the bed. “I have the top one.”

 

Alicia's first impression of her roommate is of a small, compact figure with dark hair, almond-toned skin and a whole lot of eyeliner. The hair is piled on the back of her head in an elaborate bun secured with a purple elastic, a few strands drifting out around her face; the heavily-lined eyes are cool and assessing. Her makeup is more perfect than Alicia ever expected to see in prison, and despite the fact that Alicia's own salmon jumpsuit is too short in some places and too baggy in others, this woman's seems to be perfectly tailored to her figure and height. She's also distractingly attractive, and Alicia shakes off the impulse to stare. “Hi,” Alicia says, stepping forward, hand out. “Alicia Florrick.”

 

The woman nods, glances at Alicia's hand, doesn't reach for it. “Kalinda.”

 

“Kalinda?” Alicia says, rolling the unfamiliar syllables on her tongue.  “Kalinda what?”

 

Kalinda shrugs. “Kalinda's fine.”

 

“I – OK,” Alicia says, a little thrown. Kalinda has a light accent, one Alicia can't place; Alicia wonders where it's from. “So. We're roommates, I guess.”

 

Kalinda doesn't roll her eyes, but something about her expression makes Alicia feel as if she had. “Bunkmates. You have the bottom bunk and the locker in the corner. Here, let me make your bed for you.”

 

“I – oh, no, that's OK,” Alicia says, flustered at this gesture of kindness from a woman whose face still doesn't look particularly kind. “I can do it.”

 

This time Kalinda does roll her eyes. “No. You can't. Count is in about ten minutes and you don't know how to pass inspection yet. If they decide to inspect, the more of a mess your bed is, the later we eat.” She stretches out an expectant hand for the bag. Alicia hesitates for a moment, not sure how to tell this woman that all she wants to do right now is make her bed. After a moment she yields, passing the mesh laundry bag to Kalinda, and Kalinda immediately turns to the bed, pulling out sheets and a pillow and pillowcase, discarding the half-full bag beside the bed. Alicia tries to peer over Kalinda's shoulder to watch her make the bed, trying to learn what's so special about the making of a bed in prison, but Kalinda cocks her head toward the locker in the corner of the room. “You can be putting the rest of your stuff away.” Then she straightens, her eyes traveling past Alicia, to the open space at the front of their cubicle. “Oh, hang on, here they come.”

 

“They” turns out to be a group of three women, two short and plump with pasty faces and mousy hair, looking enough alike to be siblings, and a third ropy and muscular, with a hard-worn fiftyish face and hair the improbable black of shoe polish. “Hi,” the black-haired woman says. “You're the new one. Florrick.”

 

“Yes,” Alicia says, wondering why the deputation.

 

“Welcome. I'm Judy Church and this is Pam and Lynnie Kepler. Got some stuff for you.” She slings another mesh bag at Alicia; off her guard, Alicia almost misses catching it. “Can't stay long, count's coming up. If you need...” For the first time Judy seems to miss a beat; awkwardness creeps into her tone for a moment, and she hesitates, then tosses her head, her eyes hardening. “If you need anything I'm sure you'll find somebody to ask.” She raises an eyebrow at Alicia. For the first time Alicia perceives how the other two girls are looking at her, brows lowered, almost glowering. “Have a good night,” Judy says, and exits the room quickly, the other two girls on her heels.

 

“What was that about?” Alicia says, peering into the bag. She can see toiletries, shower shoes, instant coffee, a plastic mug. “They didn't seem to like me much.”

 

“Yep,” Kalinda agrees, busy making the bed.

 

“Well, why not? Do they treat all new people that way?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then what is it? Is it because I've been in the news? Because I'm the governor's wife?”

 

“Probably doesn't help,” Kalinda agrees.

 

“So they think I'm stuck up?”

 

Kalinda snorts. “Yeah.”

 

“But – but that's not fair. I'm stuck in here just like everybody else. I didn't – I can't help any of that.” _And I didn't even do it,_ Alicia's brain howls, but she knows enough not to say it. 

 

Kalinda straightens and turns, studying Alicia for a moment with flinty eyes. Alicia thinks she has something to tell Alicia, but then her face changes and she shrugs. “OK,” she says, noncommittally. “Better put that stuff in the locker,” she adds, nodding at the bag the women gave Alicia.

 

“Why did they give it to me, anyway?” Alicia says, as she crosses the room to the locker, scooping up the other bag as she goes, wishing desperately for time to organize everything. “If they don't like me?”

 

Kalinda shrugs. “It's just something they do. You're white.”

 

“I'm white? What does that have to do with anything?”

 

“It's just the way they do it. The white people send a welcoming committee to new white inmates, the black people send one to the blacks, the Hispanics to the Hispanics.”

 

“You're kidding. They always do that?”

 

“Yeah. Races stick together in prison.”

 

“That's...” Alicia doesn't even know what that is. “And what about you? You're... Indian?” she guesses, and Kalinda waits a beat, then nods, face expressionless. “Did you get a welcoming committee from the other Indians?”

 

Kalinda snorts. “There's one other Indian here. She's 68, picked up a few packages for her son one day and landed here. She speaks about four words of English, chatters on the phone with her family half the day in Malayalam.”

 

“Molly... what?”

 

“Never mind. I didn't get a welcoming package.”

 

“Oh. I'm... sorry.”

 

“I'll live. There should be a lock for your locker in the bag the CO gave you.”

 

“Oh.” Alicia takes the hint, turns to the locker, opens it, and then sets the bags on the gray cement floor and begins to open them. Her fingers are itching to sort through the things in those two bags, find out exactly what possessions she has to her name here in prison, start laying out the next three years as she lays the objects out one by one. But before she can pull out a single one Kalinda's voice is interrupting her again. “Just put them in the locker and close it. They want you standing by your bed for the count.”

 

“Oh.” Alicia shoves the bags in the locker, slams it shut. Sure enough, a second later a red light over the door switches on, and a heavyset male CO enters the room. Alicia and Kalinda stand at opposite ends of the bed like bookends, Kalinda nonchalant, Alicia twisting her fingers together. A moment later the guard steps into their cubicle, carrying a clipboard. He consults the clipboard, nods at Alicia. “Alicia Florrick,” he says.

 

“Yes, sir,” Alicia says quickly, too loudly.

 

He raises an eyebrow. “Take it easy.” He points at Kalinda, his eyes still studying Alicia. “Leela Tahiri.” Alicia's eyes dart to Kalinda, who nods once, her jaw a little harder than before. The guard nods in return, makes two check marks on his clipboard, and leaves the room.

 

“I thought you told me your name was Kalinda,” Alicia says, trying hard to keep her tone neutral, or at least confused rather than accusatory.

 

“It is,” the other woman says.

 

“But he said... is Kalinda like a middle name or something?”

 

Kalinda shrugs. “Or something.”

 

“Uh. Okay.” Alicia's eyes travel around the room in search of something else to talk about. Cement-block half-walls painted a garish sea-green, rising a few inches above Alicia's head. Two blue lockers, one locked securely with a combination lock, one not. No pictures or hangings anywhere on the walls; nothing personal, nothing to show the presence of a human being here at all. In the corner, there's a rickety-looking little desk with two drawers. Following Alicia's gaze, Kalinda nods to it: “The top drawer's yours.” On top of the desk there's a small stack of books. Alicia meets Kalinda's gaze, questioning.

 

“You have books. Can I see?”

 

Kalinda holds her gaze for a moment, that cool, blank look back on her face, and for a second Alicia thinks she's about to deny what Alicia thought was the most innocuous request possible. Her gaze goes sharp for a fraction of a second, then relaxes. “Knock yourself out,” she says, and Alicia crosses the room to sift through the pile of books.

 

“I was in the middle of a book when I got here,” she says, riffling through the pile. “I thought maybe they'd let me bring it in once they checked it out to make sure there weren't any drugs or –“ She's interrupted by a derisive sound from behind her. “Yeah, all right, I get the point, that was stupid.” Spreading Kalinda's books out on the desk in front of her, she stops, bemused. _Salt: A World History, Wind Energy Basics,_ and – “ _Eastern Guide to Birds?_ Are you a birdwatcher?”

 

“No,” Kalinda tells her. “I've just read most of what's in the library by now.”

 

“How long have you been here?”

 

“Seven years.”

 

_Wow._ “And how much time do you have left?” 

 

“Fifty-five months. What did you get, eighteen months or something?”

 

“Three years. The maximum. The judge was outraged.”

 

“At your stealing an election.”

 

“Tampering with voting machines. But I didn't do it,” Alicia says, before she can stop herself. She's expecting a scornful laugh from Kalinda, but instead Kalinda just nods.

 

“Nobody here did it,” she tells Alicia.

 

“No, but I really --” Alicia breaks off, flushed. “So you didn't do it either?” she says rashly.

 

Kalinda leans back against the bed, unperturbed. “No, I did.”

 

“Oh.” A twelve-year sentence, and she's admitted to being guilty. Alicia wonders what kind of bunkmate she's wound up with. “What is it you did?”

 

“You don't have the hang of this prison thing yet, do you?” Kalinda says, and moves toward the desk to take the books out of Alicia's hands.

 

“After being here for ten minutes? No.” Kalinda takes the books from her, restacks them, but Alicia's question hangs in the air between them, thickening it, and Alicia's finding it harder to breathe. She casts desperately about her for something to say. “The library – where you got your books – do you know if they have _Room?”_

 

Kalinda cocks an eyebrow at her. “Room for what?”

 

Alicia's not sure why her cheeks are heating up. “No, it's just – the book I was reading. The one they wouldn't let me bring in.  _Room_ , by Emma Donoghue. It's fiction.”

 

“Oh. I don't know, I don't read much fiction. I don't think they have it. Was it published in the last ten years?”

 

“Yeah, a few years ago.”

 

“Then they don't have it. They haven't updated the library in over a decade.”

 

“Oh. I guess Peter can send it to me, but they said it had to be a new copy, like from Amazon or something, I guess, and I don't know how long it will take --”

 

Kalinda shoots her a look with a thin edge. “I was reading a book when I came here, too. I'll get to finish it in another five years. Count yourself lucky.”

 

“Oh,” Alicia says, stricken by the loneliness this statement implies: the wideness of the world outside this prison, and not one person in it to send this woman a book. “Well, what book was it? I can ask Peter to send it to me, and I'll pass it on to you. And, I mean, any books you want, really. It's not a problem.”

 

"Didn't expect you to play that card so soon,” Kalinda says under her breath.

 

“What?” Alicia demands, not sure she's heard correctly. Just then the red light goes out, and a voice comes over the loudspeaker: “C Dorm. C Dorm, go.”

 

Kalinda starts toward the door. “Dinnertime.”

 

“Now?” Alicia glances at the clock on the far wall, a black-and-white analog clock exactly like those in every classroom she ever entered, only this one is behind a wire cage. “It's four-thirty.”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“Wow.” Alicia's stomach suddenly curdles at the thought of heading with this unfriendly woman into a cafeteria full of hundreds more unfriendly women and trying to choke down what is certain to be very bad food. “Do I have to go?”

 

“If you want to eat.”

 

“No, but am I allowed to skip the meal? I'm not... feeling very well and I'd like to unpack my things and --”

 

“Whatever you want. Bathroom's down the hall on your left if you need it. Stay in here otherwise.” Without a glance back, Kalinda leaves the room. Alicia lets her eyes follow the smaller woman, the perfectly straight lines of her posture, shoulder to shoulder and head to hip, the confidence in her stride that just kisses the edge of a swagger. When Kalinda's gone Alicia lets her eyes slide around the room again, ugly walls to ugly lockers to rickety desk to _Eastern Guide to Birds._ She thinks of birds flying free over the prison, out beyond the grounds. She thinks of Kalinda tracing those graceful, receding birds with her eyes from behind a screen of barbed wire as she faces five more years in prison. She thinks of Grace, remembers studying types of birds in her fifth-grade natural science textbook with her, remembers quizzing her, giving her a hug when she got them all right. She thinks of Grace now, Grace who wouldn't come out of her room for two weeks before Alicia left, blaring loud music she'd inherited from Zach; of Zach, researching appeals strategies when he should have been studying, as though he was going to find something Diane had overlooked. She thinks of Peter's hand closing over hers as they waited to self-surrender. She wonders if they let visitors hold hands. She might be able to hold hands soon again with Peter, whose touch has left her endlessly conflicted for years, but she knows she won't be holding hands with Grace or Zach in the visiting room. They won't be visiting her. They agreed. That's part of why Grace wouldn't come out of her room. 

 

_Oh, God._ Alicia lies down on the little bunk bed, so carefully and spartanly made, buries her face in the pillowcase Kalinda put on for her, and cries.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to a long chapter that took a very long time to write! I hope I will be swifter with future updates, because this was silly. I hope you enjoy it. (Also, if the formatting is showing up badly for you, please let me know so I can fix it. I'm having some trouble with it.) 
> 
> Thank you so much to Scarlet for the excellent beta!!

 

The next morning, Alicia is out of the cubicle as soon as the red light for morning count clicks off, before the piped-in “C Dorm, go eat” has stopped echoing against the concrete walls of her cube. She's passed an uneasy night, drifting in and out of a troubled half-sleep, plagued by bad dreams whose details evaporated as she surfaced from sleep but whose substance seemed to cling to her skin. She gave up on trying to sleep at 4 am and changed from her shapeless, voluminous nightgown into her jumpsuit under her covers, unsure whether she was allowed to go to the bathroom at night, then remade her bed very, very carefully and lay on top of her sheets for hours, staring at the slight indent of Kalinda's sleeping form in the mattress above her, afraid to borrow any of Kalinda's books lest Kalinda wake up and get angry. In fact Kalinda seemed to sleep perfectly soundly, and is still asleep now as the silent, flashlit 5:30 am count concludes and C Dorm is sent to breakfast.

Alicia heads out of the dorm quickly, wanting to get a jump on the crowd and avoid the nightmare of trying to decide whom to sit with, then pauses irresolutely just outside the door as she realizes she has no idea where she's going. She's debating going back into the cubicle, checking if Kalinda wants to go to breakfast – Kalinda may be brusque and sarcastic, but her confidence and sense of ease in this prison are irresistible to Alicia right now – when two women shove by her, one muttering a curse. Alicia pauses a moment, then trots after them, hoping they'll lead her to the cafeteria. After skipping last night's dinner, she's starving.

A few more people join them on their way to the cafeteria as they make their way down a long hallway, Alicia craning her neck to see what's in each silent room they pass, usually with little success. She catches a glimpse of a bank of pay phones in one room, a darkened TV in the corner of another, and then the corridor ends in the door to the cafeteria. Alicia stands in line with a few dozen other women -- apparently most of the prisoners are not early risers – feeling their eyes on her. Last night when she came into the dorm the staring hadn't been too bad; this morning, no one seems to have anything better to do than to look at her, and Alicia feels her shoulders curling inwards, her too-short jumpsuit resettling downward a bit as she hunches in on herself, trying to be invisible. When she gets to the front of the line, she finds that the breakfast buffet she had absurdly expected isn't there; there's a giant vat of gray, gluey-looking oatmeal, a similarly giant pile of miniature cardboard boxes of raisins, and a dozen or so bunches of bananas. Alicia takes a hefty portion of the oatmeal and hesitates over the raisins; is there a limit to how many boxes she can take? Prison is supposed to be all about rules, so why is no one making the rules clear to her? She takes a box of raisins, then, feeling like a trespasser in a minefield, takes a second. She waits for someone to reprimand her, but the tray slamming against hers from behind is only intended to hurry her up. She grabs a banana and a spoon and a carton of orange juice and scans the cafeteria, grateful beyond words to see many empty tables. She's just settled in at one of them, hunching over her food like a feral animal – Cary had told her about that advice from his own how-to-do-time “prison consultant” in the heady days after his conviction had been overturned, and they'd laughed about it at the time, but it doesn't seem the least bit funny now – when she hears her name: “Alicia!”

Her head shoots up; scanning the room, her gaze lights on a clot of three women just getting out of the food line. One of them, a wiry girl with a flame-red crew cut, looking like she's maybe in her early twenties, is waving at her. Tentatively, Alicia half-raises a hand, wondering who in the world this is and what's about to happen next. The redhead nods in satisfaction, then touches the elbow of the girl next to her, a brunette with olive skin who looks all of 18. “Come on, over here,” she tells the brunette, and starts off towards Alicia's table. Alicia catches the dark-haired girl's eyeroll, thinks she hears the other woman say “Seriously?”, and looks down at her tray, studying the box of raisins. SUN-MAID NATURAL CALIFORNIA RAISINS, 100% FRUIT – another tray smacks down on the table opposite her. Alicia glances up, and two more trays land on the table, one across the table to her left, another on her left side. Trying to tuck her left elbow in, Alicia looks up at the redhead, who's now sitting directly across the table from her.

“Hi,” the redhead says, her voice surprisingly deep. Her eyes are an odd, arresting shade of pale green, darker green striations radiating out from the pupils. “You're Alicia Florrick.”

“Yes... hi?” Alicia says, warily.

“You're --” _the governor's wife, the ex-lawyer, the election thief – “_ Kalinda's new bunkie?”

“I – yes,” Alicia stammers, startled. That wasn't how she'd expected to be known.

“Hey. I'm Noah Carmichael. I'm her boyfriend.”

“You're --” Alicia feels like she's falling down the rabbit hole. There's some sort of a choking noise from the woman beside her as Alicia takes in Noah's clean-cut features, the high cheekbones dusted with a light smattering of freckles, the sharply defined chin, the short nose – the total picture adding up to a sort of butch Scarlett Johansson look, but still fundamentally feminine, fundamentally _female._ And yet – “I mean --”

“ _Yeah_ ,” the person says, much, much more aggressively than Alicia wants right now. “What, you want to check my pants or something?”

“ _No._ No, I definitely don't want – I mean --” _Oh God, oh God, oh God –_ “I mean, not that you're not – I just –” Alicia gives up, stands up. “Okay, I'm going to go drown myself in the oatmeal vat now. It was nice meeting you.”

Alicia grabs her tray, the edges of her world fuzzing out, and then a laugh breaks out beside her and a hand grabs her arm, nearly causing her to upset the tray onto the table. “Oh, sit the fuck down,” comes a voice, then, “Noah. Dude. Chill.” Alicia finds herself sitting again, someone else's hand still clasping her elbow. Dazed, she looks at its owner beside her, a fiftyish woman with short white-blonde hair and very bad teeth on display in a brief, rote smile. “I'm Ash,” she says. “Over there's Gina. And Noah. He's a transgender guy. Best to leave it alone.”

“Okay,” Alicia says in an I-surrender voice.

“And he wanted to sit with you because... I don't fucking know why, but he did, so hi. Welcome to Sherman,” Ash says, and takes a large bite of banana.

“Thank you,” Alicia says. _I feel welcomed_.

“Yeah. Look, sorry I popped off,” Noah says, peeling his own banana. Alicia is looking him over hard, watching his gestures, his features, trying to see a man in him. His voice is deep and his breasts barely press against his jumpsuit, his arms corded with muscle under sleeves rolled up halfway, but she can't get past the delicacy of his features. “This place is just hella full of transphobic bitches, you know?”

“Transphobic... bitches. Right,” Alicia says. Beside her, Ash snorts. Alicia busies herself with her raisin box, trying to open the flap along the perforation.

“I mean, no, you don't know. But whatever. I just wanted to meet you, 'cause you're Kalinda's bunkie, you know. I thought I should introduce myself.”

“All right,” Alicia says, completely lost. Is she expected to be involved in her bunkmate's love life? Meanwhile Ash is snorting again.

“Christ. Don't get him started about her,” she says, and Gina laughs. Noah's brow furrows; Alicia, having managed to pierce the perforation with her nail, pulls the box open and starts mixing her raisins into her oatmeal, keeping her gaze narrowly trained on the bowl.

“What's that supposed to mean?” Noah says, his voice a little harder than before.

“Means you never shut up about that piece.” Ash's tone is light and teasing, but in her peripheral vision Alicia sees Gina laying a restraining hand on Noah's wrist. “We get it. You're into her.”

“Look. Alicia's her bunkie. So I'm introducing myself. Being friendly.” There's a thread of tension woven through Noah's voice; Ash holds her hands up briefly, conceding the point, and after a second Noah shrugs, then pours raisins directly from a box into his mouth. “Shit, she's stuck in C Dorm with the Spanish mamis – the whites mostly get put in B,” Noah tells Alicia indistinctly, mouth full of raisins, and Alicia nods cautiously, unsure what to do with this information. Is she in the wrong dorm? Is she going to have problems? “And Kalinda's – I mean, she's my girl and all, but she's maybe not the friendliest on a first day. She takes awhile.” Gina rolls her eyes, and Ash smirks around her banana. Alicia isn't sure where this is going.

“Takes awhile...”

“You know, to warm up. She's... private. Likes to hold things close to the chest.” Ash guffaws at this, but Alicia's interest is pricking up.

“Yeah, like her name,” she says. “She introduced herself as Kalinda, but then the guard called her... Leela something... and I got confused. She didn't do much to elucidate.”

“She's Kalinda,” Noah says with emphasis.

“But then why...”

“Look. The COs fuck with you. That's what they do. They call me Rachel every. fucking. time even though I was in the middle of _legally_ changing my name when I landed in this shithole. Kalinda, her name used to be Leela. Like, that's her birth name, I guess. But it's like her deadname.”

“Her... what?”

“Her deadname. What used to be her name. Trans people, we call the name we got assigned at birth, the one from before we transitioned, a deadname. Kalinda, I mean, she's not trans, but she had some kind of transition. Something happened, and she changed her name to Kalinda, and that's her. It's important to her. So don't fuck it up.”

“Right. And in case you wanted an answer to your actual question, Alicia,” Ash says, rolling her eyes, “she's here for ID forgery. COs call her Leela because it's her legal fucking name. She made up Kalinda.”

“Your _legal name_ isn't the same thing as your _real name_ , Ash,” Noah protests. “Kalinda is her _real name_.”

“Wait, though,” Alicia says, almost talking over Noah, too interested in her bunkmate’s background to hold back. “She told me she'd been here for seven years and had another five left. She can't be here just for ID forgery. That's a class four felony. One to three years.” _Same thing I was convicted of._

Noah gives her a surprised look. “You know that off the top of your head?”

“Well, I'm a lawyer.” _Was a lawyer._ Alicia takes a raisin-studded bite of oatmeal, knuckles whitening briefly on the spoon.

“Oh, right. Cool. Yeah, no, she's got to be down for more than just forgery.”

“Does anybody know what?” Alicia says, trying to sound casual, taking another bite of oatmeal.

Gina shoots her a droll look. “You mean, is she going to shank you in your sleep?”

“No, of course not. Well...” Gina laughs, not a mean laugh, but Alicia's too rattled to join in. “Just... wondering,” she says, her voice trailing off.

“Don't worry about it,” Ash says, patting Alicia's hand briefly; her palm is unexpectedly soft, like well-worn flannel. “She ain't gonna hurt you. Actually nobody else is either, least not while you're around her. People don't fuck with Kalinda.”

This isn't as reassuring to Alicia as it's meant to be. “Why is that?” she says, still trying to sound casual.

“It's just how it is. Been that way for awhile.”

“ _What_ way for awhile?” Alicia has turned to Ash, setting her spoon down on the tray. Ash shoots a long, level look at Noah, who's opening his mouth, on the verge of saying something. Seeming to make up her mind, Ash waves a dismissive hand at Noah, then turns to Alicia.

“All right, gather 'round, storytime. Yeah, I know you want to tell it, Noah, but you weren't fucking here then. I was. Seven years ago, I been here ten. So seven years ago this little Indian chick gets processed in, COs are calling her Leela Tahiri, and no one else is calling her anything because this girl will not say word one to anyone, ever. She never got pills in the pill line, but she was acting like those girls that get snowed under on heavy psych meds, the ones that don't know which way is what anymore. Just did whatever the COs said, nothing else. Lying in bed half the day, staring out the window at the barbed wire. People thought she was maybe half-retarded or something.”

“Really?” None of this has anything at all in common with the woman Alicia met last night.

“Yeah. You get people like that in here sometimes. So two, three years go by, no one knows how long this girl's sentence is or why she's here or anything, but nobody really cares, either. She's wallpaper. Then one day she changes.”

“Changes?”

“And no one knows why. She used to get a letter occasional, one time even got a visit that she turned down. People don't turn down visits that often here, so that was noticed. But she'd read the letters she got, and I heard she got a letter the day before she changed. But whatever the reason, suddenly she's out of her bunk, she's getting stacks of books from the library, she's in the TV room, not watching the TV, but watching the people in the room. And she's telling everyone she's not answering to Leela anymore. She's Kalinda. COs thought it was hilarious, one of them let it slip that that was her fake name out in the world. Well, some people ragged her for it. There was this one bitch, Carter, she lived on making other people's lives shitty. She never paid any attention to -- Leela, Kalinda, whoever the hell – before this, but as soon as Carter knew calling her Leela was a way to piss her off, she was doing it every chance she got. Well, that lasted for about three days, and then Carter's in the infirmary with two broken ribs and a punctured lung.”

“Kalinda _broke her ribs?”_

“I mean, Carter was giving her a ration and a half of shit. This is what I'm saying. You don't fuck with Kalinda. She'll never give you trouble unless you give her some first, but if you do, watch out. She ain't gonna kill you or nothing – Carter could have gotten a lot worse, people get a lot worse in here – but she looks out for herself. Anyway, a couple days later, Carter's still in the infirmary, and the COs do a sweep of the dorms, looking for contraband. They don't do these searches that often, people thought someone must have tipped them off to something. Mostly the sweep turned up illegal makeup, cigarettes, shit like that, but they found a shiv under Carter's bunk. She never came back here, got sent off to Max from the infirmary.”

“And people think Kalinda planted it?” Alicia's mouth is dry.

“Oh, sure, that's the rumor. Rumors are cheap. Maybe she planted it and maybe Carter was just fucking stupid enough to keep a shiv under her mattress. Wouldn't put it past her. But I wouldn't put it past Kalinda to plant it either. So, moral of the story: call your bunkmate Kalinda.”

“I will,” Alicia says numbly. She looks down at her tray; suddenly she's lost her appetite for the rest of her oatmeal.

“It's the way you gotta be here,” Noah says, jutting his chin out. “You gotta take care of yourself, that's all. Shit, I wish I could slock every bitch who calls me Rachel. They'd learn fast.”

“Slock?” Alicia says, then wishes she hadn't asked. She doesn't really want to know.

“Lock in a sock,” Ash says, and demonstrates, grabbing the end of an imaginary sock in her fist, cutting it through the air with a sharp _whoosh_. “Crack your skull open.”

“People _do that_ here?!” Alicia says, the room whirling around her.

“Hey.” Gina reaches across the table, pats her hand; Alicia flinches. “It's not, like, a common thing. And nobody is going to mess with you if you don't mess with them.” Ash snorts, opens her mouth to speak, but Gina shoots her an angry look, and she subsides. Alicia wants to know what she was going to say, but Gina’s still talking. “Just do your thing and let other people do theirs. You'll be fine.”

“Better than fine,” Noah says. “You might be the best thing to ever happen to this place. I mean, shit, the governor's wife! And look at this – raisins!” Noah gestures expansively at his tray, its half-dozen little raisin boxes eviscerated and lying helter-skelter. “In fancy little boxes! We never got raisins with oatmeal before, ever. They're showing off for you.”

“Showing off? With raisins?”

“Yeah. They don't want you to tell your husband this place is trash, I guess. Which is kind of dumb, because the more you complain about it, the more funding your husband gives them to make it better, right? But they don't want a story in the paper about how the governor's wife is stuck in a shithole. So we get raisins.”

“I... OK,” Alicia says, utterly bewildered at the concept that this place is hoping to win her favor with cardboard boxes of desiccated grapes.

“Not to mention you're a lawyer,” Gina says. “People will like that. You'll probably be giving legal advice, like, 24/7.”

“Really?” A sense of warm relief is flooding Alicia; this is the first indication she’s had that any of the things she has built her life on might be of any value inside Sherman.

“Careful. Don't let yourself get used,” Ash says. “Lotta users in here.”

“Actually I was going to ask you,” Noah says, and Gina laughs. “I need some help. They won't give me my T in here –“

“Your what?”

“My testosterone. Hormone therapy. They won't give it to me, and my court-appointed didn't give a shit. Do you think you could help?”

“I think I –“ Alicia starts in, too eagerly, and then checks herself. “I mean, you know I can't actually represent you, or do any official legal work for you. I've been –“ deep breath – “disbarred. But if it's information you need, I'm more than happy to help.”

“That's all I need, just the information.”

“All right, but I don't understand.” Alicia is groping through her memory, trying to sharpen the hazy details of the one case she worked involving a trans person, a black trans woman who was profiled as a sex worker and charged with assaulting the cop who arrested her -- a pro bono from her first year at Lockhart/Gardner. At the time she’d mostly been consumed with the fact that Diane kept putting her on pro bonos while Cary was on Sheffrin-Marks, but she remembers a few things.  “Legally, the prison has to maintain you on whatever hormones you were prescribed before you came to prison. Are they refusing to do that?”

Noah rolls his eyes. “I didn't have a legal prescription. I was buying it on the street.”

“Was that what you were arrested for?” Alicia asks, her tone carefully neutral.

“Nah. Hooking, and possession. Coke.” Alicia is taken aback by how casually Noah tells her this; clearly, Kalinda's circumspection about letting people know why she's here is not shared by everyone. “I was hooking to get the money for the T. I needed it, and there was no other way to pay for it. My parents kicked me off their insurance when I came out, kicked me out of the house too, and I couldn't get it legally.”

“I'm... sorry.” Alicia is feeling horribly privileged right now, and something else besides. People like Noah are supposed to be the ones in prison – homeless, indigent, desperate, and guilty. What is she _doing_ here?

“So they won't maintain my dose. But I thought if I could get another doctor to give a diagnosis of GID and say I need it, then they might. I just don't know how to get them to do that. We don't see doctors except in emergencies. I think this is an emergency, I'm so fucking dysphoric every second of the day, I'm a fucking wreck, but they just want to medicate me for bipolar like some head case, when all I need is the goddamn T. Do you think you could find a way to make them give it to me?”

“Tell you what, give me some time to –“ What? What is she going to do in here, review case law? – “think it over, try to figure out a strategy. I can... make some calls?” Alicia doesn't think Diane is likely to be thrilled about fielding pro bono legal questions from her imprisoned colleague, but Cary might give her some length of tether for awhile, might turn up a few facts for her. “And there should be legal books in the library, shouldn't there?”

“There are, but you can't go there for a few days. That's one of the outlying buildings. They have to get your ID into the system.”

“Oh.” Alicia wants to protest that no one told her any of this, then realizes that someone probably did tell her while she was checked out, examining the thread on her sleeve. The news that she's not allowed to go to the library is by far the most unwelcome thing she's heard this morning, except for maybe the part about Kalinda breaking people's ribs. “That’s… I was really looking forward to going there today. I’d really like a novel to read.”

“You can see if you can get somebody to bring something back for you. Not gonna be any of us, though,” Ash says, picking up her tray. “We’ve got to hustle. Giordano wants us at the warehouse early today.”

“Oh. Right.” Noah sweeps the detritus of breakfast together on his tray, then looks at Alicia. “You coming?”

“Um, sure.” Alicia picks up her tray, then notices Noah pocketing a carton of milk. “Why...” She checks the question, figuring it's probably none of her business.

“No, that's OK. It's for Kalinda. We're not supposed to take food out of the cafeteria, but she likes milk and she always misses breakfast.”

“Whipped, boy,” Gina says, and Ash makes a whipcrack noise.

Noah laughs, clearly not minding the suggestion that he's whipped so long as it's by Kalinda. “Anyway, I'm not in your dorm, we're all in B, but I can usually find a way to sneak it in.”

“You...” Alicia stares down at her hands as she follows Noah and the women to the tray drop, face reddening; is Noah intending to sneak into C Dorm _with her_? Carrying contraband milk? What kind of trouble is Alicia going to get in if they get caught? This is not something she wants, not on her first morning –

“Oh, shit,” Noah hisses, as they approach the door leading to the dorms. “Officer Zaretsky.”

“Oh, fuck him,” Ash says under her breath, and then strides ahead, Gina behind her. Gina tosses a wave over her shoulder to Alicia just before she disappears into the B dorm corridor. Meanwhile, Noah's talking rapidly in Alicia's ear.

“He's one of the only ones who ever stops me from going into C. He's a hardass. Hold on --” Noah turns his back to Alicia for a minute, and then suddenly a cold object is being shoved into Alicia's pocket. “Just give that to Kalinda, tell her I sent it, OK?”

“I --” Alicia is terrified, keeping her gaze cast hard down at her feet, watching the white of her socks emerge and disappear from her salmon pant legs, step by step, as they approach the CO standing at the exit.

“ _Look up, act natural,_ ” Noah hisses at her, and Alicia forces her eyes up, finds herself staring at Officer Zaretsky's name badge. He gives Noah a once-over, motions him towards the B Dorm door, then looks Alicia over. Alicia's heart has stopped, she's certain he can see the outline of the carton in her pocket, she's going to get thrown in solitary confinement, she's going to lose her good-behavior time before she even gets any, this crazy freak has _ruined her life –_

A nod, and Alicia finds herself walking past Officer Zaretsky, into C Dorm. Her heart rate is a thousand beats a minute, her palms are sweaty. She's done it. Alicia Florrick is smuggling contraband in prison.  

 

\----

  
When Alicia gets back to her cubicle Kalinda appears to be asleep still, neatly curled under her blankets, but when Alicia moves toward her gingerly she opens her eyes. She surveys Alicia for a moment, then closes her eyes again, not seeming sleepy so much as disinterested.

“Morning,” Alicia says, slightly nettled. She plops the milk carton on the desk, then settles into the desk chair. “Your boyfriend sent you milk.”

“My boyfriend?” Kalinda opens her eyes again and pushes a stray hair off her face, propping herself up on her elbow.

“I don't know, that's what... this person said. Is it your girlfriend?”

Kalinda's eyes narrow a bit. “If you're talking about Noah, he's not either one. And incidentally,” she says, pushing herself upright and sliding her legs over the edge of the bed, “I wouldn't call him 'it' to his face.”

“I wasn't,” Alicia protests, re-running the sentence in her head. “I didn't mean...” Kalinda slips lightly off the bed, disdaining the ladder. Alicia decides to start over. “Sorry. So he's not your boyfriend?”

Kalinda shrugs, reaches for the milk, starts opening it.

“He seems to like you.”

“He does.” Kalinda takes a swallow of milk.

“And you... like him?”

“Alicia, did somebody tell you that this place was fifth grade instead of prison?”

“Sorry,” Alicia says, again. “It's none of my business anyway.”

“That's right.” Kalinda tilts her head back for another swallow of milk, then shoots Alicia a look. “Though I'm sure you heard plenty that was none of your business at breakfast.”

“Well --” Alicia feels trapped. “Probably some,” she concedes.

Kalinda sighs. “From Noah?”

“Mostly Ash, actually,” Alicia says, then freezes, suddenly feeling like a snitch. Is Kalinda going to slock Ash now?”

But Kalinda just takes another swig of milk. “Well, that's good.”

“Why is that good?” Alicia says, perplexed.

“Never mind.” Kalinda sets her milk down on the desk, turns to face Alicia straight on. She never removed her makeup last night, Alicia notices, and though the eyeliner is smudged somewhat, the effect is still formidable; her hair is tied back in a no-frills ponytail. “Alicia, whatever you think you know about me – don't.”

“Don't what?” Alicia is confused, unnerved by the hardness of Kalinda's stare. “Don't think I know it?”

“Don't think about it. Don't make guesses, don't make assumptions. Don't create sad stories, don't _explain_ me. You do your time, let me do mine.”

“What...” Alicia recognizes Kalinda’s anger, the sense of outrage at being speculated about by strangers, and yet somehow she can’t tell Kalinda she’s not going to think about her. “Is this a speech you give everybody, or is it just me?”

“Some people.” Kalinda takes a last swallow of milk, crumples the carton in her hand. “Not that it does much good in here.”

“Yeah. Well. One thing I've learned – if people want to talk about you, they're going to do it. You tell them not to, they talk about that.” Alicia can feel herself revving up; this is the first time since she got to Sherman that she has felt she knows anything about anything, and yet surely if there’s any subject in the world at all that she is an expert on, it is the ways people talk about you. “They can fill a 5,000-word thinkpiece with blather about the tension between right to privacy and right to freedom of information, and really all it comes down to is they want to be talking about you.”

"Yeah, people write a lot of thinkpieces in here," Kalinda says, and then her gaze grows sharp. “The difference is I never ran for office.”

“And I never asked for my husband to fuck hookers,” Alicia snaps, then pulls herself up whiplash-short, appalled at herself. Her second day in prison and she's picking fights with her cellmate? What is she _doing_?

But Kalinda has cracked a rare smile. “Fair enough.” She sits on Alicia's bed, leaning forward a bit to keep her head from knocking the mattress above. “I was out in the world when that happened. I couldn't believe how much airtime they were giving the state's attorney of Cook County.”

“Yeah, well. It was a slow news month.”

“And they liked the thing about the toes.”

“And that.” Alicia has no idea where this conversation is going, but somehow she’s relaxed a bit against her chair. Something about Kalinda's tone, matter-of-fact without being mocking, makes Alicia feel like she's talking to... she doesn't know who. Owen, maybe, but without the tension around Peter. Who has she ever talked to openly about the scandal, really? She lets out a long sigh, tilts her head back. “God, there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then.”

“I think the news calls you the 'scandal-ridden Florrick family,'” Kalinda tells her helpfully.

Alicia rolls her eyes in Kalinda's direction. “I'm sure they do. It's new to me, though, having it be my scandal instead of Peter's.”

“Yeah, about that.” Kalinda hunches forward, elbows on her knees. “I have a question.”

“Why did I stay with him?”

“No. Well – yes,” Kalinda amends, and Alicia snorts. “But never mind that now. My question is – why are you here?”

“Why am I _here_?” Alicia is bemused. “You know that.”

“No, not what did they get you on. Why didn't you plead it out? Pull some strings behind the scenes – or have your husband pull them? There must have been a hundred ways you could have stopped it, but you went all the way through trial and wound up with the maximum. Why?”

“ _Why?”_ A thousand answers are seething in Alicia's mind, but Kalinda's level gaze is cutting through them all, and finally Alicia lets her head drop forward, weary. “Because I'm innocent.”

Kalinda raises an eyebrow. “You're innocent.”

“The head of the Democratic National Committee framed me. Someone rigged the machines for another candidate – another Democratic candidate – and the DNC wanted me out of office, not him. I was expendable.”

“But you must have known the DNC was going to do that.”

“Pretty early on, yes.”

“Then why not take the plea?”

“Because --” Alicia breaks off, full of frustration. “Because I thought I could win. Because I'm innocent. I thought the judge would see that. I thought the system worked.”

“You're a lawyer and you thought the system worked?”

“Yes! Or I thought I could make it work. I thought I could use the law. And now I'm --” Alicia makes a short, hopeless gesture at the cubicle around her, the ugly walls and lockers, the ramshackle desk and bunk, and Kalinda, watching her from the bottom bed with impassive eyes. “Now I'm here.”

Kalinda is still a moment, then nods, gets up slowly. Her fingers barely graze Alicia's knee as she moves towards the lockers – it's a small space, the contact is surely accidental, and yet, oddly, Alicia feels her touch linger, feels a gentle tingling where Kalinda's fingertips brushed past. “The system doesn't work, Alicia,” Kalinda says, standing at her locker, looking back over her shoulder at Alicia. “It's just that it usually works for people like you.”

“Yeah. Well. It didn't this time.”

“So welcome to the fun house.” Kalinda rifles through her locker, plucks out a fresh uniform and a bag of toiletries, and leaves the cubicle. Alicia closes her eyes, suddenly near tears, feeling the breeze from Kalinda's passing.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, after a very very long pause, I chose not to abandon this fic! But it was a near thing. Thanks so much again to Scarlet for the invaluable beta and even-more-invaluable encouragement. I will try to update this again sooner than three months from now. 
> 
> I think tonight's episode is going to revisit the question of Peter's involvement in Alicia's election being rigged, so just to reiterate, this fic goes AU partway through season 6, and Peter had no involvement either in the rigging of the election or in the legal case that followed. In this story Alicia and Alicia alone was framed by Frank Landau, and that's why she's here in prison.

After Kalinda leaves the room Alicia is at a loss; what is she supposed to do with herself now? A shower would be an obvious morning thing to do, but Alicia doesn't think she's up to that right now, not at what she imagines is rush hour in the communal showers.  She goes to her locker, twirls the combination, opens the door, looks at her neatly-folded nightgown and small array of toiletries, laid out with surgical precision. She closes the locker, re-locks it, crosses to the desk and opens the top drawer, the one Kalinda said was Alicia’s. It's empty but for a sheaf of paperwork Officer Anderson gave her last night; Alicia read it all before she went to bed. She closes it, looks at the pile of books on the desk, sitting a little askew. She straightens them so their edges are aligned with the desk edge, pauses, and then, glancing over her shoulder at the entrance to the cubicle, picks up the top one. It's the one about salt. (Who writes an entire book about the history of salt? Who reads an entire book about the history of salt?) Alicia caresses the cover, its clear plastic covering slick under her fingers, then flicks the book open. Something falls out of the open page – a folded-up piece of paper, probably a bookmark.

 

Alicia's heart starts racing; what if the bookmark had fallen out of a different page and she couldn't replace it? What if something else had fallen out, something personal? She can't be doing this. She grabs the bookmark, shoves it back in the book and puts the book back on the stack, then opens the top drawer again and begins rifling through the papers, looking for the sheet about phone calls – which numbers she can call, what code she should use to do so. She has to get out of this place, where every breath feels like it's inviting disaster, where she's afraid to touch anything for fear it will scream at her. She needs to talk to someone from her real life, someone who will remind her that her real life is still there, that she is real too, that she'll return to it someday. Finding the sheet, she jams the rest of the papers haphazardly back in the drawer and flees the cubicle.

  
She finds the room with the pay phones, empty but for a couple of other women at this time of the morning; one is chattering gaily in Spanish on the phone, the other agitated and in little bursts: “Yeah, but I _told_ you – _no_ , but what I'm _saying --_ ” Alicia selects the farthest pay phone down the line, then hesitates with her hand on the receiver. Who can she call? Peter won't be at home, and she doesn't want to interrupt him at work – besides, if she's being honest, she's not sure he's the one she wants to talk to right now. Grace will be at school; Zach won't want her calling him first thing in the morning. Owen, even if he were awake, isn't on her approved call list yet. Alicia taps the phone a few times, then plucks it off the handle and dials a familiar number – Cary's extension at what is now Lockhart, Agos and Associates. Carefully she listens to a robot operator's instructions, keys in the personal access code listed on the sheet, listens to static, listens to more static. It takes just under two minutes to get Cary on the line.

 

“Cary?”

 

“Alicia!” Cary sounds genuinely happy to hear her voice. “Didn't expect to hear from you so soon.”

 

“Well, you know. I'm not that busy.”

 

“How is everything? How are you doing?”

 

“Oh, you know.” Alicia tries to think how she's doing, finds it resistant to easy summary. “Hanging in there.”

 

“Well, listen, I'll be down to visit you next week. Diane and I have been tossing some ideas around about getting a judge to hear your appeal. We get the right judge on this, line things up right, and everything goes back to normal for you.”

 

Alicia laughs aloud at that, unable to help herself.

 

“What? What's funny?”

 

“Sorry. It's just – Peter said the same thing to me when he was in prison.”

 

“Well, and he was right, wasn't he?”

 

 _It's never going back to normal_. Out of the blue, Alicia feels tears prickling behind her eyelids.

 

“Alicia?”

 

“Yeah. Sorry,” Alicia says, her voice thick, and she knows Cary can hear it. “So – listen,” she manages, trying to push through the emotion, trying to hold herself together. “I had a question for you. About a case.”

 

“A _case_? You mean, besides your own?”

 

“A – no, sorry, not really a case. Just a – a thing. A legal question. For someone else here in the prison.” Alicia closes her eyes, places a palm flat against the wall, steadying herself against the cool concrete. “Do you know anything about access to medical care for transgender prisoners?”

 

“For trans _gender_ prisoners? Not much. Why?”

 

“I'm in here with a transgender... person – someone who was born in a female body, but he says he's male -- and they won't give him the testosterone that he was taking before he came here. The thing is, he was never prescribed the testosterone. He was self-medicating with street drugs.”

 

“So they don't have to maintain his dosage,” Cary finishes for her. “But what he was taking was legal? Something a doctor would prescribe?”

 

“That's my understanding.” Alicia lets out a long breath. This is it, this is what she needed – discussing a case, working things through, hearing Cary talk in his thoughtful legal-strategies voice about somebody who is not her.

 

“That's tricky. Well, tell you what, why don't I take his case?”

 

“Take his case?” _But it's mine_. “Cary, I don't think he can pay.”

 

“So I'll do it pro bono.”

 

“What? I mean, how can you afford to be doing pro bonos right now? And you don't have the time. You've got my clients and yours – you must be out flat.”

 

“Ah, you know. We lost a few to Canning.”

 

“We _lost a few to Canning?_ I thought we were done losing clients. I thought if they were going to jump ship, they'd have already jumped. Who did we lose?”

 

“Alicia. Don't worry about it. Once you get out, they'll come crawling back. I have plenty of time --” he says, talking over her protests. “I have plenty of time for a pro bono.”

 

“But you --” Alicia struggles to marshal her objections. “I don't know if it's a good idea, Cary. I mean, he's not going to be the only one here to ask me for legal advice. And you can't take on everybody's case. I'm afraid if you take him on and not anybody else, it might get me in trouble.”

 

“Oh,” Cary says, taken aback. “Sorry. I was trying to help.”

 

“I know.”

 

“It's just --” Cary breaks off; there's a half-second of silence on the line. “With you in jail, I just feel like – like I dodged a bullet and it hit you.” Alicia almost laughs, but it's not funny. “I guess I'm grasping at straws, trying to help, because I keep picturing myself in there. I --” He breaks off again, and Alicia knows he's picturing the narrow hallways and smudged Plexiglas of the jail, the uniform khakis, the lumpy stitches in his palm. “I can't believe it ended up like this.”

 

“Well, you know. Prosecutors have it in for us. We're too good a firm,” Alicia says, and although it's a joke they've both made before, Cary laughs anyway. “Look, I think people in here are going to make me their go-to for legal questions, and I'm fine with it.” More than an understatement. “Though I won't call you every time, I promise,” she backtracks. “This is just a new area for me --”

 

“Transgender medical care in prison? I think it's a new area for everybody.”

 

“-- so... do you think you could pull up a few facts for me?”

 

“Absolutely. I should have some time later today. How should I get the material to you? Never tried to Fed-Ex to a prison before, but --”

 

“No, no.” Alicia laughs. “Just call me. Only – I just realized I can't take notes.” There must be some way to procure writing materials in prison, but Alicia doesn't know what it is. “Maybe just send some printouts by USPS?”

 

“Absolutely,” Cary says again. Alicia is suddenly filled with fierce, irrational loathing for Cary, who has the luxury of going on a guilt trip while sitting in a $3,000 suit in a spacious office, listening to the soft whir of central air. She pushes it aside; Cary has done nothing wrong, has in fact been something of a mainstay for her in the last six months. “We'll get your friend his testosterone.”

 

“Just make sure it won't get him transferred to a men's prison or anything. I don't think he'd do well there.”

 

“Done.” Cary is silent a moment, and Alicia has the odd feeling that he's holding her hand through the phone line. “We'll take care of things, Alicia. We'll make it work.”

 

“All right.” Alicia isn't really sure what “it” is, but she allows herself to feel comforted nevertheless. “I'll talk to you soon, then.”

 

“All right. I'll call you later. And I'll see you next week.”

 

“Looking forward to it. Bye.”

 

Alicia hangs the phone up, trying to keep Cary's voice in her ears, keep the feel of the sane, ordinary world of Lockhart, Agos wrapped around her. The concrete wall in front of her is bare and chipped; the Spanish-speaking woman is still chattering away. Alicia turns to leave and almost runs into the girl who had been arguing on the phone earlier. She's off the phone now, staring at Alicia with sunken eyes ringed by what appears to be tattooed-on eyeliner. Her gaze is oddly resentful, and Alicia holds eye contact with her for a moment, then turns her head and starts toward the door. She'll go back to her cube and see if Kalinda is back yet, or she'll go to the TV room and see what's on. Anything to kill time here.

 

She wishes she'd told Cary to FedEx the research.

  
\---

Heading down the corridor towards the dormitory, Alicia is startled by the sound of laughter from the TV room. It had been empty and silent when last she'd passed it, but judging from the jumble of voices, several people are in there now. . And then a male voice cuts through the mix, one that makes Alicia cock her head, listening: it's – it is! John from _Darkness at Noon!_ She recognizes the snippet of dialogue (“you'll come back from this. God's not kind enough to kill you”) and quickens her pace, feeling excited for the first time since she got here. USN must be running another one of its 24-hour _Darkness_ marathons, and now she has a specific way to pass the day. She can watch her show and take in what's going on in the room around her without having to make awkward stabs at breaking into other people's conversation. She can get a better sense of what her fellow prisoners are like, what a typical day is like. And this is the episode where Miguel and Lisa kiss for the first time!

 

When Alicia gets to the TV room she finds it fairly crowded, the space dominated by a clump of mostly-Latina women sitting in the corner farthest from the TV, joking around and talking in a rapid-fire blend of Spanish and English. A couple of older women sit in a separate corner playing checkers; there's only one other woman actually watching the TV, a 20something girl with a jagged, asymmetrical haircut and a tattoo of a snake on her temple. Alicia pauses on the threshold for a minute, and suddenly the room goes quiet. An indistinct whisper slithers out of the group, then dissolves into silence. Every eye in the room is on Alicia, and none of the expressions are friendly.

 

Unsure what to do -- why wasn’t it like this last night, when she arrived in the dorm? -- Alicia walks into the room and settles herself at the table with the tattooed girl. She gives the girl a small smile as she sits, and the girl responds with a look as though Alicia is carrying a rare contagious disease and edges a little further away from her. Alicia finds herself gripping the edge of the table like it's going to run away from her. She thrusts her hands into her pockets, balls the material of her jumpsuit in her fists, and tries to watch her show.

 

Slowly, the room relaxes again, and the Spanglish chatter behind her begins to rise in volume; Alicia thinks she’s probably paranoid to detect a new conspiratorial note in it, or to think that the proportion of Spanish to English has gotten higher ( _so they can talk about me)_. Alicia hunches forward, trying to hear the set, but a couple of particularly raucous women behind her are making it difficult. She scans the room, looking around for the TV remote, but she can't find it, and meanwhile they're heading toward the good part of the episode and can't Alicia have just this _one thing_ be normal, can't there be just this _one piece_ of home in the prison, can't she just _watch her show goddammit_

 

Making up her mind, Alicia stands and turns to the group of women in the corner. Sure enough, one of them is holding the remote. Alicia makes eye contact, and the conversation begins to die again, most of the women staring at her with a greedy, interested air: what’s this, now? The woman with the remote is not looking interested. The woman with the remote is looking like a stone wall. Alicia goes up to her anyway.

 

“Excuse me,” she says. The woman’s expression doesn’t change. “Could I use the remote for a minute?”

 

A pause. There’s a hoot of laughter from someone in the group, a gabble of excited murmurs. A few women are hunching down in their seats a bit, looking unsure. The woman with the remote shows no reaction.

 

“I just want to put the closed-captions on,” Alicia says; she’s trying to keep her voice level and slow, but the words seem to be tugging at the leash. “I’m not going to change the channel or the volume.”

 

“Fuck! We don’t like that shit. Covers up the picture,” comes a strident voice from among the crowd, but Alicia’s still looking at the woman with the remote. That woman presses her lips together, glances at the TV, then changes the channel. Now the screen is full of people kneeling at pews, praying. In Spanish.

 

“Want me to put the captions on now?” the remote-holder says, in accented but clear English.

 

Alicia shakes her head, fighting back a wave of fury: this is a blatant insult, it is intended to be blatant, and she’s finding it difficult in the moment to remember that the rules for how she can safely respond to blatant insults are different here in prison, that here she doesn’t even know what the rules are. “Why are you doing this?” she says, her voice louder than she means it to be.

 

“So you’ll leave,” comes a voice from the crowd in a _like-duh_ tone, and there are a few cackles. The checkers-players have turned to watch the scene; Alicia thinks she sees one of them shake her head in consternation and takes a deep breath, making the wholly unwarranted assumption that that woman is on her side.

 

“I have the same right as any of you --” she begins, and then her speech is drowned out in a wave of jeers and laughter. “Rights! She wants to talk to us about rights,” she hears. “Yo, we got the right to remain the TV on whatever fucking channel we want,” comes another voice. Then the woman with the remote control steps forward, and the others die down, listening, eager, expectant. The woman’s eyes, flat and dark as tarnished pennies, look almost bored, but Alicia doesn’t think she’s imagining the coiled energy in her posture as she turns her body to face Alicia squarely. Alicia forces herself not to step back.

 

“ _Mira_ ,” the woman says, her voice soft, but something in it still makes the hairs rise on Alicia’s arms. “You got it right, _blancona_. You got the same rights in here as any of us. What that means is you get in line, you wait your turn, and you let the people who know what’s going on tend to it. See, you never had to do that outside. You always jumped the line. Out there, people hand you the remote on a silver platter. But it’s not gonna be that way here.”

 

“I…” Alicia is sidelined by the ridiculousness of the image of a remote control on a silver platter. “Look,” she says, “you’re not even watching the TV. If you just…”

 

“Who the fuck you think you are, telling her she’s not watching, bitch?” comes a loud voice from the crowd, and suddenly, a woman has vaulted the table and is standing right in front of Alicia, too close, her body electric with tension. “Who the fuck you think you are, being in here at all? You --”

 

“Another prisoner,” Alicia says, but the woman is talking over her.

 

“-- think you’re the same as the rest of us? Mirabel, get out here.” The crowd immediately parts like the Red Sea, people shifting toward the walls, revealing a heavyset girl at the center, sitting hunched over herself. She glances up at the sound of her name, and the fearful expression on her round face is oddly familiar to Alicia, like an echo of someone she knew a long time ago. “You recognize her?” trumpets the loud-voiced girl, and Alicia can only stare. “No, of course you fucking don't. You get her sent here for twenty fucking years, but you don't remember.” Alicia's mouth drops open – she _got this girl sent here_? For 20 _years_? What is this woman _talking_ about?

 

She opens her mouth, swallows, swallows again. “I don't know what you're talking about,” she says finally, relieved that her voice is steady enough. “I've never met any of you.”

 

“ _Liar!”_ The heavyset girl's head jerks up, outrage edging the fear out of her expression. “I was a _client_ of yours at that fancy-as-shit law firm.”

 

“Lockhart Gardner?” But it couldn't be. Diane had vetted everyone at the prison, made sure there were no connections. “I only started there --”

 

“Not there.” But Alicia is beginning to see where this is going, with dawning horror. Diane had checked for ex-Lockhart Gardner clients at Sherman, but she hadn't checked --“That other place. Abrams, Crozier, whatever. 'A certain percent of our billable hours go to pro bonos,'” she mocked, voice high and reedy. “But they didn't give a shit about you if you couldn't pay, so they stuck me with _you._ You'd been a lawyer for, like, a week. Told me to plead out. Told me they was giving me a good deal. Twenty years later I'm still fucking here.”

 

“I told you to take a _plea_ for _twenty years?”_ Alicia vaguely remembers this woman now – she used to be a lot younger, a lot thinner, and a lot less defeated-looking – but she's sure she would remember cutting that bad of a deal. As far as she can remember the woman was up on fairly minor drug charges with some other half-bogus charges tacked on – assault charges, maybe, something that could have gotten ugly at trial – and pleading out had seemed the better part of valor. She looks at the woman, trying to make eye contact, but something has made her look down, avoiding Alicia's gaze.

 

“Nah.” The woman who had called Mirabel out of the crowd steps in front of Alicia again. “You told her plead for six years, right, Mirabel?” She cocks a head at Mirabel, who nods, eyes still downcast, shoulders hunched. “She never did nothing but shoot some heroin, but you told her six years. She gets here, she's here a few years, someone fucking tries to shank her in the shower. She fights back and they call it attempted murder. She just got back from Max six months ago.”

 

“I...: Alicia has no idea how to respond to any of this, and the wave of horror rolling over her isn't helping her to find words. “I'm... I'm sorry, but that – I didn't – have any control over that,” she finds herself saying. She's not sure if she's saying it because she had no control over the various prisoners' behavior or if it's simply random words escaping her, random words pulled from the current of the theme thundering through her brain right now: she has lost control of everything.

 

“Bitch, don't tell us you had no control!” cries the woman, who is now right in Alicia's face. Alicia can't sustain her mad gaze, and drops her eyes, backs up a few steps. The woman follows. “You'da had control if she'd been someone else. She shoulda been doing community service, not jail time. She was a rich white lady, she'da had probation. You never gave a shit about her, like you never gave a shit about any of us. You come here in prison for trying to steal the _state's attorney_ job, so you could put more of us _away_ , and you think you're getting the fucking _remote?”_ Alicia glances up quickly at this, impelled by a quick, pointless wave of anger. “That wasn't why --” she tries to start, and four or five people are suddenly yelling at her at once, full of fury for the Highland Park housewife turned incompetent defense attorney turned would-have-been prosecutor for the state. Criminal now, disgraced, and yet at every step, One of Them.

 

“Look, I just –“ Alicia is saying, without any clear idea what words are falling out of her or what comes next, and as her mouth opens the mouths of the women yelling open wider, and then suddenly they are dying out as the woman with the remote, the woman who in Alicia's view started all this trouble, steps forward. There are a few more ragged overlapping complaints, a single “bitch” dropped into the silence, and then the woman with the remote has the floor.

 

“Look. _Alicia.”_ The word is four syllables, an eerie accented echo of the way Colin Sweeney says it, a sneer heavy in her voice. “Maybe you should just...” She gestures at the door, and all eyes in the room are drawn to the motion -- “...leave here. OK? You get the picture now. You are not one of us. Never was, never will be. And maybe the TV room ain't where you should be from now on. Go back to your cubicle, read your little roommate's books, do your little situps for a flat tummy, do whatever. But stay out of here.” Her gaze locks with Alicia's.“ Clear?”

 

Alicia swallows, forces herself not to nod, and turns toward the door. She can feel everyone's eyes on her as she exits. As she crosses the threshold, there's a whoop and a cacophony of excited noise; she hears cheers and laughter amid the noise, and tears spring to her eyes. Head down, she all but runs back to her cubicle, barely noticing the surprised yelp from someone she nearly plows over. It hits her belatedly, _what if that woman shivs me for that_ , and the tears burst forth, a good thirty seconds before she reaches her bunk. She has a vague blurry impression of people standing in the doors of their cubicles, looking her over, shaking their heads, and when she gets back to her cubicle she dives into her bed and pulls her covers over her head so she won't have to see them watching her. She cries herself out, soaking through the thin pillow. Finally, once she's cried out, she begins to pace.

 

She's still pacing when Kalinda comes back from wherever she's been, hair shower-wet, but nothing to give any clue as to what she's been doing in the rest of the hour and a half she's been gone. (Noah's face floats into Alicia's mind.) Kalinda stops in the doorway to the cubicle, watches Alicia all but running from one corner of the cubicle to the other, eight steps each way, her cheeks flushed and her eyes snapping. Kalinda raises an eyebrow, then points at the bunk, a messy tangle of sheets and blankets. “Better have that fixed by inspection,” she says.

 

“I don't _care_ about --” Alicia's voice, ragged and still a little sob-swollen, is next door to a shout. Kalinda raises the eyebrow again. “Sorry,” Alicia says after a minute, slowing her pace a little. “When is inspection?”

 

“Varies. Might be a spot-check in a few hours,” Kalinda says, and perches on the chair. “There a reason you're running back and forth in here?”

 

“Well, tell me where else I'm supposed to go!” Alicia snaps, fighting the tears back again. “I can't go to the library, I can't go to the track, I sure as hell can't go to the TV room.”

 

“Why not – oh.” Understanding dawns on Kalinda's face. “Did you try the TV room this morning after breakfast?”

 

“ _Yes_. And I got run out of there like a – like a --” Alicia doesn't even know like a what. Like a stray dog? Like a roach? Like a whitey in the Spanish dorm?

 

“You went when the kitchen crew was there.” Kalinda nods, face much more casual than Alicia wants it to be. Alicia wants outrage. “I could've warned you about that.”

 

“Then why didn't you?!” Alicia seethes, picking up her pace again. Kalinda holds up a hand, her gaze drifting to a spot somewhere near Alicia’s feet.

 

“Not my job. Slow down, before you wear a trench in the floor,” she says. Alicia glares at her, considers breaking into a jog just to spite her, then heaves a sigh and plops down on the bed.

 

“I don't understand. Is it just the kitchen crew that hates me, then? Because that – Mirabel is on the kitchen crew? They all hate me for that?”

 

“Sort of,” Kalinda says, unhelpfully.

 

“Sort of _what?_ ”

 

“Sort of, as in the kitchen crew hates you for that.”

 

“What, and other people hate me for something different?” Alicia cries, and Kalinda shrugs in affirmation. “Well, who the hell else hates me?”

 

“What are you going to do if I tell you? Fight them?” Kalinda says, not ungently. Alicia drops her gaze. Then she raises her eyes to Kalinda's, and the bare trace of warmth that she finds there is enough to get her to continue.

 

“I'm not going to fight anyone,” Alicia says. _Duh_ , say Kalinda's eyes. “But I want to know what I'm in for. I have a right.”

 

“Lawyers and their rights,” Kalinda murmurs, and Alicia flushes, remembering she'd said the same thing in the TV room. Time to retire that expression. “But Alicia. Look.” The warmth has disappeared from Kalinda's gaze by now; now she simply looks very practical, very matter-of-fact. “You're coming in here with baggage that some people don't like. The kitchen crew, they're all up in arms because of what happened to Mirabel --”

 

“Which wasn't even my fault! I told her to take a plea, not get in a – ”

 

Kalinda holds up a slender finger. “Sure.. But Mirabel got a raw deal and they need someone to blame, and you were her rich, white lawyer who didn't give much of a shit.” Alicia opens her mouth, then closes it. “The good news is, you're lucky. After all that time in Max, Mirabel isn't going to pick any fights with anyone.”

 

“And what about the rest of them? They seemed madder than she was.”

 

“Probably. Stay out of the TV room after meals for a few days.” Kalinda straightens up, begins doing something with the books on the desk. “But none of them are going to risk the SHU for hurting you, not unless you push them. So don't push.” She picks up the stack of books, riffles through them, sets one aside.

 

“Still, I just – this was never supposed to happen,” Alicia says, going back to pacing. “I don’t know what to do. My firm checked to make sure I wouldn't be in prison with anybody I'd represented. They missed this because it was an old case, but still, I don't think I should be in this dorm. I don't understand why I am. Noah said this was the dorm for – for Latinas --”

 

Kalinda rolled her eyes. “Noah says a lot of things.”

 

“Well, but was sh-- he wrong? Was I put here --” Alicia's voice drops. “-- put here as punishment? Are the guards trying to get me –” A gruesome array of images flick past Alicia's mind's eye. “-- into trouble?”

 

Kalinda sighs. “You don't want to be in B Dorm, Alicia. Take my word for it.”

 

“But why? Why not, if prison is so – I mean, you're telling me that whites look out for whites in prison and blacks for blacks and so on, so shouldn't I be in – if there's a dorm that's more for --” Alicia is faltering, unable to read Kalinda’s expression, and afraid to say more.

 

“For white people.” Kalinda raises both eyebrows, drops them. “You can say it. But – let's just say the white dorm has its share of white supremacists.”

 

“Oh.” Alicia doesn't know what to make of this; white supremacists would hardly be her first choice for prison buddies, and yet surely she's white enough for them? “So?”

 

“So your husband put a lot of them away. He was tough on hate crimes when he was state's attorney.”

 

“Oh. _Oh_.” Alicia's eyes widen as she watches this brand-new shitstorm rolling in on her.

 

“Yeah.” Kalinda puts the book she's set aside under her arm, starts out of the cubicle. “Just keep a low profile for awhile. It'll blow over. The next new thing will happen, people will get distracted.”

 

“Wait. Kalinda. Please.” Suddenly Alicia can't bear to see Kalinda's back turn on her, can't bear to see her walk away; her dispassionate attitude towards Alicia, the occasional traces of kindness in her voice and eyes, abruptly feel like Alicia's only lifeline here in prison. “How am I supposed to... I mean, what am I supposed to do now? From what you're telling me, everyone here hates me. So what can I do to change that?”

 

“I told you. Wait it out.”

 

“No, but I mean, right now. What am I supposed to do now? Today? I don't know how --” Alicia breaks off, refusing, absolutely _refusing_ , to let the tears brim over once again. She will not be that weak in front of Kalinda. She will not be that weak in front of herself.

 

Whatever shows on her face, it's enough to make Kalinda's gaze soften a bit. “Calm down. Not everyone here hates you. You're a lawyer and you're the governor's wife. Plenty of people are going to want to use that.”

 

“You mean if I offer people legal advice...?”

 

“I wouldn't go offering. There are a couple of 'jailhouse lawyers' in here – not real lawyers, but they give out legal advice, and you don't want to step on their toes.”

 

“Then what am I supposed to do?”

 

“Just give it time. People will be more interested in a real lawyer. Wait for them to ask you. And being the governor's wife – people will want to use that too --”

 

“For what, more raisins?”

 

“For a lot of things. I wouldn't let them, but if you play it right you'll have some people on your side.” Kalinda doesn't ask Alicia to explain about the raisins, Alicia notices, which means she has probably heard about them from Noah. Which means she and Noah have probably discussed breakfast, and if they've discussed the raisins they've discussed Alicia. Alicia slows in her pacing, unsure what to make of this, but before she can say anything Kalinda nods towards the door to the cubicle. “Case in point,” she says in an undertone.

 

Alicia pivots to find a young girl, early 20s maybe, with blonde hair braided into cornrows and the sort of bad teeth that Alicia is beginning to recognize among a subset of prisoners. She's holding a book and shifting from foot to foot. “Hey,” she says diffidently, stealing a quick glance at Alicia's face, then looking back at her own feet.

 

“Um – hi,” Alicia says, bewildered, looking back at Kalinda. Surely this girl must be here for her.

 

But she doesn't seem to be. “Hi,” the girl says to Alicia, voice low. “I wanted...” She shifts her weight again. “I mean, I overheard you say you wanted something to read and I know you can't go to the library yet, so… just... I could lend you this? If you want?”

 

“Really?” Alicia says, feeling a flush rise to her cheeks; she's moved far beyond what’s reasonable by the gesture. It's the first time anyone has gone out of their way to be kind to her since she's gotten here. “I mean, if you're not – you sure you don't want it for yourself?”

 

“No, I finished it,” the girl says, looking up again, her face a little more animated. “It's really good. I'm Brianne,” she says, and steps forward, proffering the book in one hand.

 

“Hi, Brianne. I'm Alicia,” Alicia says, stepping forward to take the book, then shifting it to her right hand so she can shake hands with Brianne. Brianne, looking a little scared again, complies; her palm is warm and sweaty.

 

“I know,” she says to Alicia's introduction. “OK, well, hope you like the book. Gotta go to work. Talk to you soon,” she says, and exits the cubicle. One of her feet seems to drag a little behind her as Alicia watches her go. Once she's out of the dorm, Alicia turns to Kalinda.

 

“She has a court date coming up,” Kalinda says. “Told you.”

 

Alicia bites her lip, wishing irrationally that the girl had been being friendly without a quid pro quo lurking on the horizon. Still, it's much better than nothing. She glances down at the book in her hand. She's holding it back cover up; the layout makes it clear it's some sort of romance novel. _The Lockharts of Texas Series_ , it says at the top, and she has an odd disjointed mental image of Diane’s face under a cowboy hat on the cover of a romance novel.  She flips it over, then stares at the title, nonplussed. “What is it?” Kalinda asks.

 

Alicia holds it up so Kalinda can see. “ _The Virgin Bride Said, 'Wow!'”_ she reads. She's trying as hard as she knows how to keep from laughing. Then she meets Kalinda's gaze, gleaming with amusement identical to her own, and she can't hold it in anymore and bursts out laughing. After a split second, Kalinda joins in.

 

“Oh God, don't tell her I was laughing at the book,” Alicia chokes out finally. “No one will ever be nice to me again.”

 

“You think I'm going to track her down and tattle on you?” Kalinda says. “I have better things to do. Make your bed and I'll check it later,” she advises, then exits the room, holding one of the library books. Smothering a last giggle, Alicia makes the bed carefully and then lies down on top of it, holding the romance novel. She starts trying to read, but the content isn't helping her to take it seriously, and after a few minutes she lets the book rest on her abdomen and stares out the bottom of the bunk at Kalinda's locker. Brianne's lending her this book is the nicest thing that's happened to her since she arrived, and yet she's not thinking about Brianne's face when she gave it to her, but about Kalinda's face just before they had burst into laughter together. A smile touching the corners of her lips, Alicia drifts off into a half-asleep reverie. Suddenly she's feeling very warm.

 

She's wakened an indeterminate amount of time later by footsteps in the cubicle; Kalinda is back from wherever she'd gone. “Get up,” Kalinda says unceremoniously. “I need to check the bed.”

 

Suppressing an eye-roll, Alicia surrenders her bed to Kalinda's inspection. But as she turns she feels a light touch on her arm, and as she places _The Virgin Bride Said Wow_ on the desk another book is laid on top of it. She glances down. _The Weight of Water_ by Anita Shreve, an author she's read before and liked.

 

“Um. Kalinda. Is this for me?” she asks tentatively.

 

“Yep,” Kalinda says, peering under the mattress at the tucked-in sheet.

 

“But – how did you know –?”

 

Kalinda straightens up. “You seem like an Oprah's Book Club type.”

 

“But this isn't Oprah's Book Club,” Alicia says, half-defensively.

 

Kalinda shrugs. “Whatever. I had to go to the library anyway. You need to tuck the sheets in tighter,” she says, then steps around Alicia and heads for the door. “Going now.”

 

“I – thank you,” Alicia calls after her receding form. Kalinda doesn't answer. Alicia picks up _The Weight of Water_ and gingerly sits back on the bed, trying not to disturb the carefully-arranged sheets, and wonders why Kalinda went back to the library to return one of her books when the other two are still sitting on the desk. She opens the book and falls into the story almost immediately, with only a bit of her mind left to wonder why the book cover feels like it’s humming lightly under her fingers, or why in her mind’s eye the main character seems to be wearing Kalinda’s face.

  
  


 

 


End file.
